I never wanted for this to happen
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: Asuka may have hated Toji, but she never wanted his death…and never wanted to lose a friend she wanted to protect. Please, review.


Creation began on 05-25-09

Creation ended on 05-26-09

Neon Genesis Evangelion

I never wanted for this to happen

A/N: While I'm waiting for some more reviews on what to do with my story of "The Indifferent One", this will work as another alternate universe story of the franchise. Set in the manga after volume six, and as far as I know, nothing like this has been done before. What if Asuka, after Shinji threw in the towel he'd been forced to hold, did something to make him see her differently. Shinji/Asuka!

Packing his things away, the former Third Child of NERV and pilot of Unit-01 wore a sour expression on his face. One of his best friends was dead, caused by his father, and even after he'd been denied his right to knock him dead where he sat like he was a king, all he could do was turn away from it all. Turning away. Not so similar to running away. He knew the Angels would still come, but they weren't his problem, anymore. It wasn't his war, and he wanted nothing more to do with it all.

Knock, knock! A knocking came to his door, but he ignored it, so the person outside simply let herself in. Asuka, wearing her school uniform and a frown, looked at him and said, "So you're just leaving after all that? That's pathetic! Oh, well, I guess you were useless, after all."

Shinji ignored her as he finished packing his bag and started tying his shoes. Of all the people he had ever met, she was one of the lousiest ones so far. Her and her superiority complex.

"What are you gonna do?" She asked him. "They'll still come and we have to stop them…"

"Then, you do it," he cut her off, not wanting to hear any more. "Go prove you're the best! Show them all you're unconquerable…until it's you that loses someone you wanted to protect. What do I know, you probably have no one to protect."

Once he was done tying his shoes, he got up and walked out of the apartment, leaving the redhead with a deeper frown.

"Who does he think he is?!" She questioned, going after him. "Stupid! Just who do you think are?! Of course, I have someone to protect!"

Before he even reached the elevator, he stopped and turned to face her.

"Who, then?" He asked. "Who is it that you want to protect, and don't tell me it's Mr. Kaji."

"It's not him," she told him. "For you information, it's Hikari."

Sighing, he went, "Let me ask you this: What would you have done if it was her that was picked? What would you have done if it was her in that Eva…and that that man made your Eva kill her? What would you have done?!"

That question got her in an internal fit. Of many questions, that one was tough to answer, even for her. Of course, she would've killed the Angel, but to kill her best friend if she were stuck inside it was something she didn't want to think about. She was the only friend she made ever since she was transferred here to Tokyo-3, and the last thing she wanted to do was hurt her. And she was probably hurt right this moment because the dork she had feelings for was now asleep in the dirt.

"If you can't answer that, then, don't answer it," Shinji went on as the elevator door opened. "How many people have to die to save the world, Ms. Soryu? What's the amount and in the end, are they all worth the suffering?"

When the doors closed, Asuka was left pondering those words heavily. As much as she wanted to prove that she was the best, the very person she wanted to prove it to was dead, and if the people you want to protect are taken, in one way or another, then, there was no point to continue with what you were doing. Her mother had taken her own life after being committed to an institute with mental contamination…and even tried to kill her when she begged her to look at her and not at a doll she perceived as her daughter. The memories she tried so hard to repress over the years came rushing back to her conscious, and she found her answers to his questions.

-

Waiting for his train to take him out of the city (and as far away from NERV and his father as possible), Shinji thought to the last time he saw Toji alive, and that was the day he'd been told by him that he'd been selected to be the Fourth Child. He'd been shaking and terrified of what was to happen, and was probably scared of dying when the Angel took over the Eva and defeated Units 00 and 02, only to have his fear of death a reality when Unit-01 crushed his plug, ending his short-lived career as a pilot. As much as Shinji wanted to grieve for his friend, his tears wouldn't come. Even when the anger wasn't as present as it was before he left NERV HQ and Misato's apartment.

"Shinji!" He turned to the voice of Asuka, standing several feet away from where he sat. "What you asked me before you left. About how many people need to die to save the world? My answer is too many that don't deserve to die at all. And the other question of what I would've done if it were Hikari that were killed? My answer to that is… I would've done exactly what you're doing…and I've think not of the consequences of leaving."

"Really?" He asked her.

"Really. You…you be careful on your way outta here, though. Maybe we'll meet again someday."

"But wait a minute. You hated Toji. I always thought you'd be happy for him to be outta the way."

Asuka lost it and jumped him to the ground! Grabbing his neck by his shirt's collar!

"Disliking somebody isn't the same as wanting them dead, Shinji!" She snapped at him. "I never wanted for this to happen! Never!"

"You and me both. But it did happen, and there's no way to change it…and we both know who's responsible but will not admit it."

"You could try talking to him."

"No! Not to him! Never again to him! If he wants to pretend he's God and can decide who stays and who goes, let him! Just leave me outta his grand scheme! He was just gonna discard me again when I served no further use to him. That's how he always is: If nothing is useful to him, he cuts his ties with it. For years, I'd always hoped to gain his acknowledgement, that I was worth his time…but no. I show up the day the Third Angel showed up, and all he wanted from me was to use me. He dragooned me into piloting the Eva. I'll not be dragooned again."

Asuka had no idea that he'd been forced to pilot the Eva. All this time, she always thought he was just an unlucky jerk…when in truth, he was just a person that didn't know anything about the Eva or the war until he was sent for. She knew better now.

-

It wasn't until seventeen minutes later that the next Angel showed up, and only Rei was there to fight it. While Shinji had resigned, Asuka was nowhere to be found. The Angel had avoided much damage from the blue Eva that used an N-2 Mine against it and split the creature's head in two, disabling it. Now nothing stood in its way of finding Adam as it blasted right into NERV HQ.

-

Hiding out in the wilderness, Shinji and Asuka sat on some rocks as they waited for the end to come and all the trauma to end. They had spoken of everything that ever happened to each other in the last few years of their respective childhoods: How Shinji had been accused of taking a bike by the police, how Asuka's stepmother never tried to get to know her, and even how they both ended up getting involved in the Eva program. Almost nothing of any secrets were left between the two.

"You could still go back, you know," he told her.

"No. I didn't even see her today." She responded.

Suddenly, they saw the Angel that had shown up, departing high into the sky, which didn't add up properly to them. They expected the end of the human race to be like a large explosion that burned away the lands or a tremendous earthquake that rattled cities until they fell and took the people with them to their graves.

_Chosen beings, special people,_ thought Asuka as she got a better look at the Angel: Zeruel looked as large as the very Evangelions themselves, but lacked actual limbs, and had a head that looked like skull. Other than what she'd seen, it looked pretty deceptive and everything. _I wonder if everybody else's dead now._

-

Misato didn't know whether to thank God that the Angel of Might simply left seconds after it entered HQ without trouble…or to be grateful that whatever the reason it left was better left unanswered after it came onto the bridge, destroyed part of the MAGI, looked at them all, and then left. It was enough to drive a person insane with curiosity on why. She thought they were doomed when Asuka couldn't be located and when Rei and the Dummy Plug were rejected by Unit-01 and it shut down, confusing them with why it did so. It used to work okay with her, but now it was like it couldn't stand her, anymore. And with the Dummy Plug, it was like the thing was some sort of poison that it had built up an immunity towards after it was first used to destroy Unit-03.

Gendo, in his cold solitude, tried to get the Eva to accept the Dummy Plug again and again as the Angel got closer, and then demanded to know why it wouldn't bend for him…until all the monitors around him showed his son, the only person that could even pilot the Eva…but was unwilling to do so ever again. And then, as quickly as it showed up to end them, the Angel just left, like there was nothing there for it. No Adam, no resistance, no Third Impact…nothing at all.

While he pondered why his scenario wasn't working, Misato was the first to try and leave NERV HQ and find Asuka, wanting to know where she'd gone prior to the Angel's arrival.

-

Opening her left eye, Rei found herself in the medical ward again, wondering if she was still alive or if she'd been replaced again like the last time.

_I'm…alive,_ she thought, recalling how the Angel defeated her with just a slicing blow to the head. _He…he didn't come back, after all._

-

More than three days after the Angel left and Misato couldn't find her sole female charge, and she looked everywhere she could think of that she would go to. She even tried Hikari's house, only to find her sisters and father in a state of mourning. When asked why, they gave her the bad news: Hikari had decided to join somebody she tried to tell her feelings for after she found out he'd been killed…by taking a lethal dose of sleeping pills three days prior to the Angel. Section 2 was full of idiots that couldn't find her at all, let alone keep watch over her outside activities.

_Where could she have run off to? _She thought as she drove around the highway. "Where would Shinji run off to if he were still here?"

With nothing left to lose (except her job), she tried one place that others might've not tried: The wilderness around Tokyo-3. Stopping her car by a tree, she got out and walked onto a path.

"Asuka! Asuka! Asuka Langley Soryu, are you here?!" She called out to her, if she was even around.

It wasn't until about fifteen minutes later that she found who she was looking for on the path as she continued walking. Asuka was with Shinji, whom she thought had long left the city by now.

"Misato," they both greeted. "What brings you here?"

"Making sure that the both of you are still alive," she told them. "Where were you when the Angel attacked?"

"She was with me the whole time," said Shinji. "We saw the Angel leaving into the sky and assumed that it gave up…and you're still alive, so that must be a good sign, then."

"It came, damaged Unit-00, blew a large hole into HQ, caused much damage to the city, and then, when everyone thought the ending was to come, it left us right when we couldn't get any more crippled than we were before it arrived." She told them.

"Hold on a second. Rei was in Unit-00? Why wasn't she in Unit-01?" Shinji questioned her.

"She was…for about 5 seconds, until it rejected her. It wouldn't even let her pass the startup line. We even tried the Dummy Plug (she then noticed his expression go very negative)… Sorry, Shinji. We tried a different method, but it rejected that, as well. And since Asuka wasn't there, all we could do was send Rei out to stop it."

"But she couldn't," Asuka uttered. "She was defeated. So now what?"

"Don't know. We don't even know if the Angel will come back, and if it does, we're screwed."

"It probably won't," went Shinji. "Though, I wouldn't bet my luck on it. What luck is there to even bet, anyway? How is everybody else?"

"NERV is trying to repair the damage caused by the Angel, many of the remaining residents are leaving, along with the Horaki family. All three of them."

"Three?" Asuka asked. "What happened to the fourth member?"

"Hikari had committed suicide before the Angel even showed up. Something about wanting to be with somebody she hadn't had the opportunity to say her feelings for the guy." She answered.

"Toji," said Shinji, bitterly, and then he turned away to sit by a tree.

"No wonder I couldn't reach her," said Asuka, her heart already past broken by this. "She was already dead."

She then went over to Shinji and sat beside him. Misato hated to see them both like this, how both of their worlds had to be broken in half over two separate deaths, and it wasn't even their fault.

-

The other Angels didn't come after the incident involving Zeruel. NERV was disbanded and Gendo went missing, presumably off the grid, along with Rei, until she was found three months later, having returned to her old apartment. Shinji left Tokyo-3, never to have anything to do with the Evangelions again, and Asuka went with him, since who she wanted to protect was no longer alive. Ryoji Kaji, after he managed to avoid SEELE's attempts to end him, tried several times to get back together with Misato, but eventually gave up as she continuously worried over her former charges, whilst Ritsuko lived in solitude with her cats at her grandmother's house out in the countryside. Much of the city had been abandoned after much of its population left, leaving only those that used to work for NERV. About twelve years passed and Misato had nearly forgotten about Shinji and Asuka until she had received a letter from them a few days later. They were going to be visiting her in about a week…for old times…before the tragedies.

"Wow, look at you two," she greeted them when they arrived, and noticed two children with them. "Please, come in."

Shinji and Asuka, looking more like they were only aged by four years instead of twelve, stepped in, along with their children, and sat in the living room.

"How've you been, Misato?" Asuka asked.

"Like life has become hollowed out ever since you two left," she answered her. "But you both had your reasons for leaving. You?"

"I'm sure you can guess."

"You got married, didn't you?"

"Yeah. Right after we turned twenty and he got a job at a bakery and a restaurant. I work as a senator for the UN, using simple, common sense. It was until a year later that we had them (pointing to their children)."

"They're adorable. They look just like you both. What are their names?"

"Well, our daughter's name is Himeko and our son is Kame." Shinji revealed.

"Doesn't that mean 'turtle'?"

"We were inspired by that old story about the tortoise and the hare." Asuka explained.

"Wow."

"Is Pen-Pen around?"

"No. He passed away last year. Old age finally got him."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. He was actually happy before he left. I still mourn for him."

"Just like how we mourn for old friends." Shinji sighed. "So whatever happened to everybody else? Did they leave the city, too?"

"Only the ones that didn't feel safe did. Pretty much all the familiar faces had left some time after NERV was disbanded and the Evas dismantled."

"Thank the kami that they were dismantled," Asuka sighed as she went to pick up her five-year-old daughter. "I threw away my neural clips in a small vault we keep at home so that I wouldn't have to see them again. I can't believe I constantly wore them back then."

As they were through talking about what they hated and were more into what they enjoyed, the day went on very well, even though the pain of what was caused by NERV years ago still dwelled in their hearts. There was pain…but there was also solace, and for them, that was enough for now.

The End.

A/N: Since I was still waiting on more reviews on my current and incomplete Eva fic, this came to mind. Big thanks to whoever can guess where I got the inspiration for the daughter's name. Peace!


End file.
